You Know It’s Halloween in Hollywood….

When you see this sign posted on the street. Happens every year. Very efficient.

Makes me wonder, why is Silly String so threatening? Surely the cost of cleaning up silly string doesn’t rival the Halloween revelers street mess. Does anyone even use silly string anymore? This just makes me want to go out and buy a couple of cans to blast someone with tonight!

7 Replies to “You Know It’s Halloween in Hollywood….”

I was wondering about this as well, actually. Some research pulled up an article from the LA Times (in 2004) and a Reuters article/press release (2008).

The impetus for the proposed law, which now faces a vote by the full council, came from Hollywood residents and business groups who complain that each Halloween their streets are inundated with people wildly spraying one another with colorful streams of the compressed foam. The stuff is sold under such brand names as Crazy String.

Police say the annual explosion of silliness can lead to violence among warring bands of silly stringers, and puts police officers, particularly those on horses, at risk.

“I thought it might have been a little silly,” Police Capt. Michael Downing, commanding officer of the Hollywood station, said of the proposed ban on the string. “But more and more, it becomes a flashpoint where disorder occurs.”

As a former resident of Hollywood, who lived there prior to the silly string ban, I can attest that silly string IS harder to clean up than other trash. Cigarette butts, paper even bottles can be swept away. Plus all of those things fall on the ground. Silly string sticks to EVERYTHING. And prior to the ban silly string would be stuck all over the place for weeks after Halloween,long after even drunk vomit had been washed away.

I recall in years past the problem centered in difficulty cleaning up the stuff and the increased costs, not so much violent string wars (though they did happen among a few). I never agreed with the ban but the fine is so steep it makes civil disobedience a very expensive way of voicing disagreement.

Ooohhhhh My God. Unless you lived through the pre-ban years you have no idea how bad it got. Full on fights would break out from people being silly stringed. ‘Knuckleheads’ as our previous chief would have called them, would use silly string as a gateway aerosol to fuck shit up. And having ruined my car’s paint and upholstery back in high school with silly string, I can say once the sun bakes the stuff it is quite damaging. The silly string ambushes are the reason why I stopped going to Hollywood and went to WEHO instead. Of course, going as a klown, I guess I had it coming.